FUN WITH UNIVERSAL NETWORKING

<< Background >>Digitalisation provides valuable opportunities for learning; however, it imposes demands on teachers. Teachers are expected not only to be profound users of educational technologies but also to engage in the digital environments such as online courses, educational platforms and mobile applications. The main principles of the project were to empower teachers to develop their digital identity, enhance students’ learning and their development as learners. We wanted to inspire children to be active European citizens when they grow-up and empower them in being entrepreneurial human beings, when they face the challenges society has in store for them now and later on in their lives.By participating in concrete activities with children from other countries, they could gain knowledge about the different techniques in Science, Social Studies, English, IT and Maths via technological tools. By doing this, they will be able to seek out opportunities all over Europe to be successful.The needs we wanted to address were;- The insufficiency of the usage of technological tools in education- Ensuring equal opportunity with technological tools- Use the experience of partner schools in digital learning to achieve superior educational outcomes<< Objectives >>The schools impemented the tasks and shared good practices in order to achieve the following objectives:1. To inspire children through their participation in concrete projects that challenge them by working together with children from other countries in Europe.2. To improve education in schools that joined the FUN-project.3. To develop school policy on common European curriculum by using digital tools. 4. To make students digital natives.5. To create and share digital content and resources6. To increase teachers' digital competence7. To provide students with adequate access to digital educational resources and support services to improve their academic performance8. To provide a more holistic approach to education.<< Implementation >>All the participants prepared a presentation in the form of short movie of their schools' situation and showed it to the rest of the teachers at the start of each mobility. In that way schools could profit from the strengths of other schools to cope with the challenges that lay in front of them. During the training weeks we set up partnerships on developing the professional and educational environment in the schools.The project activities were cyclic to show that teachers and schools continue improving on becoming entrepreneurial teachers in Europe working in schools with a sound gamification policy. This way we made sure we had the most impact on the children.Each school created a digital portfolio in which it showed their development.The portfolio contains:1. Short movie of their challenges and strengths.2. Summary of how they have worked on their challenges, with help of the strengths of the project partners.3. Summary of how they have used their strengths to help other schools cope with their challenges 4. List of concret projects done with the children.5. Results of gamification toolDuring the meetings, all partners carried out the tasks planned in the project. They were:- presentations of mathematics, science, social science, robotics and storytelling lessons using web 2.0 tools- discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of the applications and tools used in the tasks -lesson observations using digital tools - each project meeting was devoted to a different topic<< Results >>It is clear from the surveys conducted before and after the project that the goal of increasing teachers' digital competences was achieved. In all the questions that we worked in this Pre and Post test survey, we could notice that there was a positive evolution on all the questions. Because of this we can say that the objectives of this project in what concerns the use of WEB 2.0 tools by the teachers was a sucess because our main objectives where reachedAlthough the project did not plan to develop material results or related dissemination activities, during the project implementation we produced practical teaching materials that can be used at school. These are:- videos showing digital tools for learning mathematics in 4 basic activities - Each school tested a different digital application for learning mathematics. They were: Genially, Wordwall, Nearpod and Hypatiamat. Each school made a video showing the application in practice and presented its advantages and disadvantages.- films showing nature and scientific experiments - Each school recorded a video with the help of web 2.0 tools presenting a scientific experiment. It presented its advantages and disadvantages- films made by children within the activity Five Nations Five Cultures – meeting devoted to Social Studies – students made over 80 films presenting their place of residence, family, school, interests, etc.- educational digital game - designed Minecraft world - for learning mathematics by young learners. The game was designed by the Polish school in cooperation with other partners. It is an interesting and motivating game with math lessons in a game-based learning environment- films showing Robocoding – each school made a film presenting how the Robotic and Coding are taught at their schools-An Activity Toolkit including lesson plan for teaching about robotics via web 2.00 tools such as EO Browser, Scratch, Arduino, paper circuits starter project- digital versions of well-known stories – Each school made a presentation of a story using a method of digital storytelling. Using modern technological tools (for example Scratch) they combined various formats, such as text, photos, graphics, interactive elements, audio or video files. - portfolios – each school made a digital portfolio presenting their challenges and strengths, a summary of how they have worked on their challenges, with help of the strengths of the project partners, a summary of how they have used their strengths to help other schools cope with their challenges, a list of concret projects done with the children and the results of gamification tools